Adelaide United Youth Team travel to Tuggerah to play the Central Coast Mariners Youth Team tomorrow morning in Round 16 of the Foxtel National Youth League.
After a disappointing loss to Newcastle last weekend, Adelaide again hit the road again and Coach Michael Valkanis says his team just needs to continue on with business as usual as they prepared for this game.
“We just go about our business when preparing for this game,” said Valkanis.
“Central coast are very similar to Newcastle, in the way of their structure and the way go about their football.
“It was a nice little run, seven games unbeaten and I think last week we had plenty of chances to win.
“Sometimes you need a loss to have a nice little reminder of things. We’ve got to go back to, to keep improving and keep becoming better.”
But saying that Valkanis was also quick to praise the squad in the leaps and bounds they’ve made in improvement so far this season.
“We’re playing very good football.”
“We went through a stage where we weren’t getting results when we weren’t playing good football, to now we’re dominating games, playing very well and the whole squad whether we’ve got ins or outs, we’ve got players that can come in and play the job.”
And this shows as the Reds coach is confident enough to bring sixteen year old, Riley McGree to Debut for the Young Reds this weekend.
“He’ll come into midfield at some stage in the game, so we’re excited about another young gun coming in and making his debut for the youth league.
“This year we’ll have the third ’98 (year) born that we’re blooding this year, so that’s another sixteen year old. We’re very excited about because it’s not too often that you’re able to do that.
With the Mariners sharing a similar structure and style to that of the Newcastle Jets it will be a good test to see where the boys are at.
If they are able to overcome the Mariners this week then it could potentially split them from the middle of the pack and put them in a good position to secure as high as second.
“I think they are a very good side, they’re very physical, physically stronger than most teams in the NYL, and they play a very direct type of game and that caused a few problems last time.
“But in saying I think last time we played them we were going through our learning process and ever since then I think we’ve improved quite a bit so it will be a good gage to see exactly where we’re at.
“As a group what we want to achieve as a team, it’s very important we win this game and we could probably start breaking away from a group that is formed from fifth right down to last spot.
“So it’s an important game for us to get three points away from home and hopefully next week when we play Perth we could be trying to get third or second spot.”
Adelaide United Youth Team travel to take on the Central Coast Mariners Youth Team on Saturday morning at the CCM Centre of Excellence, Tuggerah. Kick-off 10:30am ACDT.
